On May 24th of 2024, I will be a featured designer in a locally run fashion show in Milwaukee, WI, titled Kinderwhore: Deteriorating Femininity and Beauty, put on by the Dire Need Zine. Within this show, my designs will be a reflection of my perspective on fashion and clothing as a nonbinary lesbian. Gender and clothing have always been intertwined, especially from a Eurocentric, Western perspective. However the fluidity of gender and gender expression through clothing has only recently come to a place of acceptance in the Western world, regardless of the long history of gender queerness and gender fluidity found abundantly in indigenous cultures all over the world, and even far less abundantly in the Western perspective. Because of the stigma around gender queerness and transgender people, clothing can feel restrictive and unnatural to the body it's worn on, but fashion can become expression, and freeing to the wearer. My line of designs will reflect the restrictiveness of clothing, then deteriorating the uncomfortability to find the freedom in fashion and gender expression.

In December 2023, I graduated with my BA in Art History and my BFA in Art, focusing on fiber arts, drawing, and painting from UW-Milwaukee. My thesis art presentation for my graduation was a similar expression of gender through clothing and fashion, but presented in a very different way. My thesis, titled Welcome to the Big Top, was a much more whimsical approach to coming to an understanding of my gender, using clowns as a way to express my love of bright colors and silliness as well as the fluidity of my expression. Since the thesis show was put on in May of 2023, I’ve had a lot of time to further develop my understanding of my gender and reflect on my journey through its discovery. My thesis Welcome to the Big Top was a big part in finding my gender, but my history in exploring my gender fluidity and expression always came through fashion. From when I was a child designing clothing for my Monster High dolls to when I was in high school finding my love for Harajuku fashion and its many substyles, I’ve always used fashion to explore my unique form of femininity and androgyny from the perspective of being a lesbian and dismantling the male gaze in my expression. Fashion has always been a crucial part of my gender expression, and my designs in Kinderwhore will reflect the journey I’ve been on to understand my gender fluidity.

The designs I have worked on at this point have been based on these concepts of metamorphosis and duality, drawing inspiration from bugs that scare me as well as my disconnection from my internal organs and their connection to sex and gender. Out of my sketches, the designs I have chosen to move forward with are the cockroach dress (last image, second from the left, pink dress), the june bug dress (last image, third from the left, blue dress), the gutz dress (third image, third from the left with the stomach gore), the heart gore dress (third image, to the far right with the chest gore), and the constriction dress (second image, on the left). All fabric and notions used in this series of dresses will be pulled from my personal collection, with the only items purchased new being the hardware, such as grommets, boning, and busks.